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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 22:31:11 GMT -5
Looks like May will be a heavy movie-going month for me. Apart from new films, there are several classics coming up at the two cinemas I mostly go to here, so many I won't be able to catch them all: but I'll try to get to as many as a i can. Tomorrow night at the one closer to me they're showing Wings of Desire and later in the month John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, both of which I've seen before, but not for a long time and PoD I've only seen on video on an old-style tv. And at the other place, farther away, they're showing four Alain Delon movies, none of which I've ever seen before: -Le Samouraï, Purple Noon, The Red Circle, and Red Sun.
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 22:06:42 GMT -5
None of Lee's redesigns worked and what is with all of the segmenting? If it is supposed to signify armor, why would Superman need armor? Never thought much of Lee's design sense, when it came to costumes. The entire problem for me is the style. The no outside trunks idea is fine with me, whether it's a one-piece or trousers plus top, or whatever. The artist could have drawn them in their traditional costumes and I'd probably still hate it, I just find that style ugly, ugly, ugly; and the same goes for most superhero artists of that era, whenever it was exactly (1990s-2000s? not really sure).
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 21:58:30 GMT -5
1994.3
Hit the Highway - Proclaimers
These guys gave one of the best concerts I've ever been to in person a few years after this cd came out. This album itself would probably rank below Sunshine on Leith with most fans, maybe myself as well but I don't think it's far off. Lots of variety from up-tempo numbers to serious ballads, including a couple that deal with their Christian faith in a much more appealing and sympathetic way than that kind of thing usually strikes me. As an example of the faster tempo songs, I'll post the first one below, in which I think the words and music go together especially well:
and for a slower number, I think my favourite is this cover of These Arms of Mine, which before hearing I wouldn't have thought would be a match for their style, but it fits their voices beautifully, to my ears:
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 21:46:30 GMT -5
Ah yes, the Mavericks. They're one of those bands that a couple of my friends keep telling me I should check out, but for one reason or another I've never taken the time to get into them. I like the sound of these two tracks you posted. This album is a little earlier than the Mavericks that most folks here in the UK know. The band had a colossal hit over here in 1998 with "Dance the Night Away", which Wikipedia tells me is from the album Trampoline. But yeah, these two tracks sounds good. I noticed that when I was digging around, that Trampoline was pretty huge in the U.K. and in Europe in general. I'm not sure why, but that album was much bigger there than it was in the U.S. I have this cd but, as with Johnny Cash's American Recordings, totally forgot it came out in 1994. Yeah, I remember liking this one at the time. Can't recall which song I heard that made me buy the cd now. In general I think I would have been even more of a fan of the Mavericks if they'd leaned a little harder into the Latin influences: I liked them but they were just a little too much on the straight-country side of things for me to become a loyal fan. All the same, nice album, great choice for your number 1 of 1994. The Mavericks progressively leaned more in to the Latin influences with each new album, to the point where they released a Spanish language album in 2020. That was the album they were touring in support of when I saw them. The same can also be said of Raul Malo's solo albums, which also tend to be more pop/crooner oriented.
I was hoping you'd say that. It gives me a stronger incentive to look for more of the later stuff, solo and Mavericks.
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 21:44:56 GMT -5
Moving on to 2004, which I should be able to get done before heading to D.C. for a week. Favorite albums of 2004 #10 – Slaid Cleaves – Wishbones Cleaves is one of the better and more consistent Folk/Americana singer-songwriters. In a better world Cleaves would be as big as Sturgell Simpson. In a better time, he'd at least be seeing big names come in and cut his songs (as happened with Guy Clark and Townes) because he's a great songwriter. As it stands, he puts out an album every now and then, tours a bit, and...well a few of us pay attention. This is actually not one of his strongest albums. It's fine, but it pales in comparison to to what he was doing in the early 90s. But on any album by Cleaves you're going to find very well written songs, mostly about losers. You could almost say that he's the David Goodis of songwriters. Still...there's plenty of good stuff here.
Haven't heard of this Wishbones band, or is that a typo for Wishbone Ash?
Just kidding, these two Slaid Cleaves songs both sound interesting: I like the low key mood and stripped down arrangements, but the songs themselves will probably need a few more listens to sink in. And I thnk this is the case with a few of the other artists you've posted that are new to me: I'd have to listen to a track or a cd more than just two or three times to see how I really felt about it, even when on first listen my feelings are mildly positive.
I certainly appreciate that there are guys (and I presume girls?) who are doing this kind of thing rather than the commercially-driven, mainstream country that I mostly find unlistenable, with a very few exceptions.
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 21:16:03 GMT -5
1994.5 Mars Audiac Quintet - StereolabThis is a band whose sound I liked a lot at the time and listening to them recently for the first time in some years I still find them enjoyable. Perhaps they're at times stronger on overall mood and style than on songwriting but their sound appeals to me enough that I can overlook that weakness, if it is one. This track starts off sounding almost like pleasant background music but I always find myself listening more closely before it gets too far. Oh boy, once you go down the Stereolab rabbit hole, you don't come back for a while. I didn't get into them until a few years ago when I did a sweep of some other 90s indie rock/pop that I overlooked at the time like Teenage Fanclub, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Belle and Sebastian, The Mountain Goats, and Modest Mouse. I immediately devoured all of Stereolab's back catalogue. I have a few more of their cds so I must have liked them quite a bit. I'm just in the process of re-introducing myself to the music I was into back in the 90s and also trying a few things I missed at the time, so I'll see how far I went with them or when I left off buying heir cds.
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 11:37:46 GMT -5
1994.4
Monster - R.E.M.
I haven't read a lot of music journalism since the 70s so I could be off-base this but my impression is that this album was a little under-rated at the time, after the huge critical and commercial success of Out of Time and Automatic for the People. Still, they had a pretty big hit with What's the Frequency Kenneth, so maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, I think this is one of their best albums, very strong from start to finish with the songwriting still at its peak. I think the band did a great job of changing their style just a little, with a harsher, at times slightly distorted guitar sound, while not losing their basic sound and all the qualities I liked from their earlier records. I'll assume everyone knows What's the Frequency Kenneth so I'll go with a couple of other tracks as examples:
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 11:27:51 GMT -5
#1 - Second Coming by The Stone RosesIt took less time to fight the entirety of World War 2 than it did for the Stone Roses to release their second album. The band's self-titled debut had appeared in April 1989 and was a smart blend of unabashedly retro guitar sounds and current rave culture. It sounded something like the Monkees on ecstasy and it set the template for '90s indie music, influencing countless other bands. For about a year after that landmark first album, the Roses issued a handful of singles, the last two of which were not on the debut album and seemed to signal the imminent release of the band's second LP. Then…nothing. Silence. Embroiled in litigation with their record company for a couple of years, the band finally managed to escape their contract and retreated to the studio to work on their next album for almost 3 years. When it finally came out in December 1994, Second Coming was treated by UK indie fans as something of Biblical importance (in keeping with the record's cheeky title, of course). While some proclaimed it an instant classic, there was also disappointment and a palpable sense of anti-climax from some quarters. Myself, I thought and still think that, for the most part, it's a fantastic record – my favourite of 1994, in fact! Is it a faultless masterpiece like the Roses' debut? No, of course not. It's a tad overlong and there are a handful of tracks that feel a lot like filler. If the band had dropped 3 or 4 of the weaker songs, you would have had a much, much stronger, more concise album. But when Second Coming is good…my God, it's f*cking fantastic! Here's the video for the single "Ten Storey Love Song". This is an uplifting anthem, that metatextually refers to the process of writing the song itself as a demonstration of love. But while it might at first seem to be an unabashed love song, if you scratch below the surface, there's an unexpectedly darker lyric than you might at first discern. This is an epic song – damn, I wish I'd written it!
Stone Roses were another of the big British bands of the time that I was never exposed to enough to get a handle on. This song sounds great to me on first listen, for example, so I think I would have noticed if I had heard it back then. As I've mentioned ad nauseum lately, I'm just starting to get back into all things 90s in general, so I'll definitely be adding this to my list of stuff to look for.
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 11:19:14 GMT -5
More of my top albums of 1994 (and more British indie rock for Slam_Bradley to enjoy )... #2 - Definitely Maybe by OasisOasis's debut album Definitely Maybe was a major shot in the arm for the British record industry in general and the indie rock scene in particular back in 1994. The songs on it absolutely upped the ante in terms of the songwriting quality that an indie album could or should feature. Right from the opening track, "Rock 'n' Roll Star", the band's musical manifesto is laid bare: noisy guitars, punk and John Lennon-influenced sneering vocals, and melodic, fiendishly catchy songs. Along with Blur's Parklife, which was my #5 pick, Definitely Maybe was the other key album of the early Britpop scene. It was an exciting time to be a UK indie music fan, as we watched the slightly niche scene that we had all followed so passionately for the past 3 or 4 years going overground and impacting on the mainstream. My one criticism of Oasis has always been that their lyrics are at best banal and at worst just sound like placeholder lyrics that were the first thing that came into songwriter Noel Gallagher's head. But griping about the lack of meaning in their lyrics misses the point when the material is as melodically strong as it is on Definitely Maybe. This is a collection of 11 life-affirming, fist-pumping indie songs. Sure, it's all basic meat-and-potatoes indie stadium rock, but Oasis never sounded as vital and exciting as they did on theis debut album. Here's "Live Forever", the third single taken from the album. Its simple, nursey rhyme-esque lyrics, sugary sweet melody, and swaggering punk attitude demonstrates exactly what it was that made Oasis so special in 1994…
My impression is that Oasis got way more airplay here in Canada than the other big in Britpop bands of the era - Blur, Pulp, Suede, etc. I assume that was true in the US too, since popular culture in Canada, like so much else, is almost totally under the American thumb. So I can't complain that I never had the opportunity to hear their music but for whatever reason I never really took to it at the time. I could hear that they had some nice tunes, but I've never really liked the quality of the lead singer's voice and the hype around them as the new Beatles was a turn-off. Also, a song from their next album or two that got a lot of exposure over here was Wonder Wall, which I actively disliked, so that kind of sealed the deal for me, at least for a few years.
I can pinpoint exactly when I started to think I should give them another listen: when I heard a song of theirs played in the 2006 movie Red Road. It fit really well with what was happening in the movie at that moment - a kind of sad, almost depressing "party" of maybe only five or six people drinking and trying to enjoy themselves, and this Oasis song bringing them to life for a few moments - and from that point n I started giving them a closer listen whenever I happened to hear something. I still haven't gotten around to buying any of their cds but I'll likely look for this first one now I've seen it here.
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Post by berkley on Apr 29, 2024 11:01:58 GMT -5
Favorite albums of 1994 #1 - The Mavericks - What a Crying Shame
This is the album where The Mavericks became The Mavericks. Yeah, they'd released two previous albums. And they were alright. But they were both fairly standard neotraditional country albums. Fine for what they were, but nothing remotely special. With "What a Crying Shame" the band started to branch out and explore their influences, particularly the south Florida Cuban influences that would really influence the band later on. I would argue that it's their best single album. And it's definitely the one where Raul Malo really found his voice. And what a voice it is. Yeah, there is more to the band than Malo. But damn...that voice. This album is just jam-packed with amazing cuts that make perfect use of Malo's pipes. At various times I've had five or six cuts from this album on various playlists. Great cuts written by Raul Malo and Kostas in the title track and "There Goes My Heart." Incredible covers of Springsteen's "All That Heaven Will Allow" and Jesse Winchester's "O What a Thrill." Thirty to forty years earlier, Malo would have been an amazing Latin crooner. Here, he and The Mavericks fuse traditional country, countrypolitan, and Latin sounds and it is just a joy for this boy to hear. I'll add that they haven't missed a step in the ensuing years and are absolutely incredible in concert. Is this as important an album as American Recordings? Nope. But it gives me just as much joy. And I listen to it start to finish a bit more often. And there are a whole lot more single tracks off it that I listen to a whole lot. I have this cd but, as with Johnny Cash's American Recordings, totally forgot it came out in 1994. Yeah, I remember liking this one at the time. Can't recall which song I heard that made me buy the cd now. In general I think I would have been even more of a fan of the Mavericks if they'd leaned a little harder into the Latin influences: I liked them but they were just a little too much on the straight-country side of things for me to become a loyal fan. All the same, nice album, great choice for your number 1 of 1994.
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Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2024 23:10:25 GMT -5
1994.5
Mars Audiac Quintet - Stereolab
This is a band whose sound I liked a lot at the time and listening to them recently for the first time in some years I still find them enjoyable. Perhaps they're at times stronger on overall mood and style than on songwriting but their sound appeals to me enough that I can overlook that weakness, if it is one. This track starts off sounding almost like pleasant background music but I always find myself listening more closely before it gets too far.
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Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2024 22:47:25 GMT -5
I think we may've discussed Cash's American Recordings on here before, but I agree that these records were absolutely a return to form for him. For me though, they still don't reach the heights of his Sun Records or Columbia era stuff from the '50s and '60s, but they are, as you say, a whole lot better than most of what he put out in the '70s and '80s. For me though, too often on the American Recordings albums it sounds a little like Cash is just going through the motions. There are absolutely exceptions to that, of course, and some of the performances on these albums are absolutely stunningly good, but a fair bit of it sounds rather pedestrian to my ears. I don't actually own any of the Rick Ruben-produced Cash albums in their entirity, but I do have a smattering of tracks from them on various different compilations. From this specific 1994 album, I know "The Beast in Me" and "Bird on the Wire", both of which are very good versions. I think one of my biggest gripes about these Ruben era albums is that it's a shame they don't feature more of Cash's own material. Maybe he just wasn't writing as much as he had back in the '50s and '60s, but yeah, it's still a shame. I think we'll have to agree to disagree, because I don't find anything pedestrian about really any of the performances. And while I get what you're saying regarding more songs penned by Cash, he was never a particularly prolific songwriter and most of his great songwriting was near the beginning of his career. American Recordings (the first album) was roughly 1/3 songs written by Cash. At the point they began the recording sessions Cash was 61 years old and his health was already beginning to decline. I just don't think he had it in him to do a ton of writing along with the recording. Fair point about Cash never being a prolific songwriter but I would say that while almost all the song and songwriter choices were interesting not all of them ended up working as well in practice as I think they might have - and I wonder if some of that is down to Rubin being a little too married to the idea of unexpected combinations of Cash with writers and material he wouldn't normally have worked with, whatever the result, rather than leaning more to whichever performances turned out to be an effective meeting of song and performer. Of course, that's assuming there was a lot of stuff tried that didn't make it onto the album, and if there was I'd love to hear those out-takes - because there were moments on the album that Cash sounded a little disengaged from the material, to my ears.
All the same, there weren't any tracks I'd call complete misses and I never used to skip any songs when I was listening to the cd back in the day, so possibly we just have to accept that not everything is going to work perfectly when you take the kind of risks Cash and Rubin took here.
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Post by berkley on Apr 27, 2024 20:23:21 GMT -5
It's the first time I've ever seen a purchase posted with bananas in the background....I must try that sometime hehehe The anti-banana league hasn't been active here for some time, so it's time for the bananas come forth and multiply... -M
Maybe it was a special deal - free bananas with every comic book purchase.
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Post by berkley on Apr 27, 2024 18:48:55 GMT -5
SS Decontrol's Get it Away... messy hardcore EP. Just the way I like it. Dezerter's Ku przyszłości... Polish punk EP. Very cool. RYM says it's a hardcore record but it was fairly rhythmic. YDI's A Place in the Sun... angry hardcore EP with terrible production. That either adds to the aesthetic or destroys it. YMMV. Fang's Landshark! This sounded closer to noise rock than hardcore, imo, due to the slower tempo and humorous lyrics. Not bad. Death SS' Evil metal... early Italian effort at doom metal. Actually kind of amazing that this is from 1983. This sounds like it comes from a later point in metal history. Death Cult's Death Cult... The Southern Death Cult begin morphing into the Cult with this EP. This marks the tail end of their post-punk gothic rock phase. It's an interesting peek into a band in transition and a pretty good EP with improved production and musicianship. Naked Raygun's Basement Screams... This was okay. I was expecting it to be more clever based on the name of the band and the EP (something along the lines of The Misfits, I guess), but it was an interesting mix of punk rock styles. Gai's Damaging Noise... there's hardcore, and then there's Japanese hardcore. The vocalist sounds like a rabid dog on this. This will give you nightmares. The Long Ryders' 10-5-60... The Long Ryders were a Paisley Underground group who did a Country Rock thing. It's kind of weird to hear country music coming out of Los Angeles, but they were committed to it. MDC's Multi-Death Corporations... thrashy anarcho-punk. No prizes for guessing who they were going after. Pretty Maids' Pretty Maids... interesting debut EP from this Danish metal group. This is very much straight metal but enjoyable. Sonic-Youth's Kill Yr. Idols... this is a companion piece to Sonic Youth's Confusion as Sex LP from the same year. Slow, brooding noise rock. It's hard to imagine that these guys would become one of the biggest alt rock bands of the late 80s-early 90s from listening to this. Subhumans' Evolution... this isn't bad, but as with a lot of UK82 stuff, the vocals bother me. I know it's meant to be working class punk rock, but the accent is grating. Los Lobos' ..And a Time to Dance... this okay. I imagine they would have been a fun band to see live. Front 242's Endless Riddance... fun Belgian minimal synth EP. They don't make music like this anymore. Thomas Dolby's Blinded by Science... I have zero attachment to She Blinded Me With Science. It's not one of my jams. But I was interested in the rest of Dolby's output on this EP. It turns out that he was quite a decent songsmith. Certainly deserving of a bigger rep.
I'm not a huge fan of She Blinded Me with Science either and probably for that reason have never sought out any more of Dolby's music. But a few months back I happened to be watching Gothic, the Ken Russell movie about Byron and the Shelleys, and was surprised to see that Tomas Dolby was responsible for the soundtrack of that film - and it was pretty good! So perhaps I should look for something after all.
Not much to say about the other things you mention, most of which I haven't heard of. Front 242 sound like something I might want to try. Los Lobos and Sonic Youth are acts I've always felt I should like more than I do, maybe I just haven't heard the right things yet. Long Ryders I wasn't aware of until very recently when Confessor listed one of their albums in his Best of 1984 a few pages back in this thread.
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Post by berkley on Apr 27, 2024 15:00:02 GMT -5
Yesterday evening I caught La Bête, starring Léa Seydoux, directed by Bertrand Bonello. This was a quite fascinating science fiction movie, one of those things that's hard to describe without giving away more than I think would be conducive to appreciating it in full. I can say that there are three story strands, on that takes place in the early 1900s, one in 2014, and one in 2044: there's no mystery made of them, it's clear pretty early how these stories are related to one another, so I don't think that should be a spoiler of any kind.
My personal reaction was that the 2014 narrative didn't grab me as much as the others: it doesn't start until I think well into the 2nd half of the film and felt a little too drawn-out to me, but it is important to the overall narrative. So I wouldn't say it's a flawless piece of work, but still a must-see, IMO, for anyone interested in SF movies or films in general. I'll definitely be looking for more of Bonello's work, this being the first movie of his I've ever seen.
One more thing - I've complained recently about certain performers being under- or mis-used by film-makers (e.g. Gemma Chan in The Creator): well, Bonello really gets the most out of Léa Seydoux in this one. I think she's in nearly every shot, she's hardly off the screen for a minute. So she is very much the star of the show and has a lot of work to do to carry all the interconnected storylines. Her main co-star is also impressive - an English actor named George MacKay who reportedly learned French specially for this rôle (I thought he did very well in both French and English, and Ill be curious what RR thinks or any of our other French-speakers if they see this film). Guslagie Malanda was also really good in a part that I wish had been a little bigger as the relationship between hers and Seydoux's characters seemed to need more space to develop.
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